LETTER III.

VISITING THE SICK.

MY DEAR

In no

Of the various duties obligatory upon the Parish Priest, that of visiting the sick is by far the most serious and important, —it is a duty the conscientious fulfilment of which demands great strength of resolution, and some sacrifices of self-denial. instance does the wisdom of our religion more obviously appear than in the provision it has made for the presence and counsel of her servants at seasons when their presence is the most essential, and their counsel most especially needed. When the mind is distracted by the cares, the business, or pleasures, of the world, the warning voice

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is heard to little good effect. The occupations or amusements of the past, the provisions for the present, and the future prospects of the worldly creature, engage his entire thoughts, and the precepts of Christianity retain but little hold upon his heart. With him the interests of time are every thing—the dearer interests of futurity are seldom permitted to arrest his attention. If the public exhortation of the clergyman win him to meditation upon his own uncertain state-if he be made to understand the superior value of the future over the present, the substantial joys of Heaven over the idle and transient vanities of earth,—if he be even prevailed upon, while under the influence of the awakening truths of the preacher, seriously to "commune with his own heart," it is but a temporary impression; he carries not those pious meditations to his home and to his chamber; the counter charm of temptation speedily destroys the

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good effects of the preceding lesson from the pulpit, and the following day finds the weak mortal pursuing the same career of worldly-mindedness and folly, in which the warning voice surprised him.

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But with man brought low by sickness— with man subdued to reflection under the chastening hand of God, the case is widely different. If the Christian can at any season be brought to seriousness, if the thought of futurity at any period of his earthly pilgrimage can be profitably indulged, if he is ever to be awakened to the strong conviction that time will, sooner or later, be lost in eternity-that there will be a day in which God will judge the secrets of every heart, bare to the sinner's view the recorded transgressions of his life, and award the sentence that will determine his fate through a long futurity;-it will be in

these moments, when Death seems about to assert his unsparing power; and demonstrate to the sorrowing creature, by an unanswerable practical argument, that, if he trust to this world for his happiness, he grasps at a fleeting shadow,-if he lean on this world for support, he trusts to a "broken reed,"—if he look to this world for consolation, he builds his hopes " the sand."

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upon

Those cares, and anxieties, and occupations, and amusements, which seemed to have taken such fast hold upon his mind, that no earthly counsellor, no friendly admonition, (save that which occasionally reached him during his ceremonial attendance upon the public worship,) were permitted to come near him-all, all fade in an instant before the appalling march of sickness and the possible approach of death.

He now, perhaps, for the first moment of his life, sees and feels the reality of those truths to which he had hitherto indifferently or incredulously listened. He is now made to understand that the lesson of man's mortality is no flight of oratory employed to amuse the fancy of the preacher, to win upon the ear of his auditor; but a heartsearching substantial truth. The vanities of life, derobed of their borrowed fascination, rise in their naked deformity to his view; and the sufferer, his soul divided between the clinging love of life and the dread of death,-between contrition for past offences and the fear of coming judgement, inwardly resolves, should God be pleased to spare him yet a little while-should he be permitted once again to mingle in the busy scenes of life-that if temptation assail him, it shall find him armed with religious courage to resist it; that he will "use the